Blake J. Delaney

How Blake Helps Clients

Blake J. Delaney focuses his practice on guardianship matters, litigation (commercial, managed care reimbursement, creditors’ rights, and healthcare), and healthcare licensing. His experience includes incapacity and guardianship proceedings; arbitrations and lawsuits relating to managed care reimbursement disputes for health care providers; residential and commercial foreclosures; bankruptcy litigation; replevin actions; lien enforcement proceedings; securities litigation; probate and trust litigation; and counseling health care clients about decision-making, end-of-life and licensure issues.

Blake’s experience with lending clients and healthcare clients gives him a unique ability to understand his client’s objectives. He believes that a client’s interests can often best be served through creative solutions, including forbearance agreements and work-outs. But when settlement is not possible, Blake has the experience necessary to take contested matters to trial. He has secured multi-million dollar judgments in favor of lender clients relating to defaulted loans, successfully defended claw-back claims from managed care companies against healthcare providers, tried contested guardianship cases and assisted numerous clients working through licensure issues with Florida’s regulatory agencies, including the Agency for Health Care Administration and Department of Health. Blake believes that understanding his client’s business and objectives, and communicating clearly about strategy, are the keys to legal success.

What Clients Can Expect

Blake’s clients can expect a relationship built on regular communication and honest assessment, and they can expect Blake to provide exceptional written work product and zealous advocacy in the courtroom. He believes that every interaction – whether with the client, opposing counsel, regulatory authority or judge – is important in that it delivers an opportunity to advance his clients’ goals.

Blake believes in communicating realistically with clients about the resources, time and other investments necessary to achieve objectives so that the client is fully informed. Blake also recognizes the importance of articulating well-reasoned arguments and producing work product that represents the seriousness with which he undertakes all of his representations.

The most important part of my job is to listen to my client’s objectives and present them with legal strategies to help them achieve their goals in the most effective way possible.

Blake has a strong commitment to pro bono work and is consistently recognized for his exceptional pro bono service. Blake’s pro bono work focuses on the areas of guardianship and guardian advocacy. In addition to assisting low-income clients with being appointed legal decision-makers for their loved ones, Blake has also presented lectures for the Tampa Bay community’s legal aid organization, Bay Area Legal Services. Blake has also spearheaded the drafting of guardianship and guardian advocacy forms for Bay Area Legal Services to provide to their clients.

Outside the Office

Blake was born and raised in Northern Virginia but has been a Floridian since 1999. He and his wife enjoy traveling with their three wonderful children and have visited all 50 states with them. In his spare time, Blake is a DIY-er who enjoys renovation projects and landscaping.

Since 2010, Blake has been honored consecutively by his peers and selected to the Florida Super Lawyers Rising Stars list (2010-2018) and Florida Super Lawyers list in 2019 and 2020. In addition, Martindale-Hubbell has given Blake an AV® peer review rating. In 2019, he was named among Florida Trend's Florida Legal Elite. Blake has been selected by his peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America© consecutively since 2021 in the Commercial Litigation category, as well as the Bankruptcy and Creditor Debtor Rights / Insolvency and Reorganization Law category.

Proof Points

• Lead trial counsel in multiple contested guardianship and incapacity proceedings in Florida.
• Co-lead counsel in a multi-week trial in Florida successfully defending a managed care company’s claw-back claim against a physician.
• Frequent lecturer throughout Florida on the topics of patient decision-making and guardianship.
• Lead counsel for a Florida hospital in a multi-million dollar probate lawsuit, which was then affirmed on appeal.
• Trial counsel in creditors’ rights cases in federal court, state court, and arbitration settings.
• Lead counsel in defending health care providers against licensure deficiency actions brought by regulatory agencies.